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5 things you missed: Google Doodle competition, easy GIF tool, more

By Dan Lewis, Digital First Media

Posted:
02/21/2014 03:11:46 PM MST

Updated:
02/21/2014 03:12:01 PM MST

A visitor plays the video game Tetris (1984) during an exhibition preview featuring 14 video games acquired by The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, March 1, 2013. (Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images)

1. Ready, set, Google Doodle competition!

After announcing the Google Science Fair, the Web giant has opened a new competition for artists.

The competition is open to artists in grades K-12, and the winner will see their artwork on the Google homepage as well as win a $30,000 college scholarship and a $50,000 Google for Education technology grant for their school.

The competition closes on Thursday, March 20, with the winning Doodle animated on the Google homepage on June 9. Have fun!

You've seen them, these magical looping photographs on the Internet. GIFs, pronounce them as you like. A new website, Giffffr.fr, allows one to create GIFs from YouTube videos in minutes.

All you need to do is grab the URL from the YouTube video (not the shortened URL for sharing, the actual URL), then follow the instructions. You can easily change the beginning, end, size and speed of the GIF, as well as add a custom caption.

It's remarkably easy, and the process shouldn't take too long. The editing options are basic, but for a quick GIF, it's a great tool.

Brick by brick, a new study has found that Tetris can help stop food cravings.

“The reason for the lower cravings,” the study reports, “Is that Tetris is a fast-moving visual game that requires attention to shapes and positions. That distracts the part of the brain that produces imagery of the thing you crave and therefore makes it harder to crave.

Secret is a popular new social network, and the app just added some new features that users had been begging for.

The new version lets users flag inappropriate content, subscribe or unsubscribe to any post, as well as enabling unliking – a feature that allows users to remove any association between you and all of your previous posts on Secret's servers.

Missy Franklin, Jenny Simpson, Adeline Gray and three other Colorado women could be big players at the 2016 Rio OlympicsWhen people ask Missy Franklin for her thoughts about the Summer Olympics that will begin a year from Wednesday in Rio de Janeiro, she hangs a warning label on her answer.